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    Google’s Sundar Pichai on Antitrust, Trump and A.I.

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    Google’s chief executive spoke with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook SummitGoogle got a head start in the artificial intelligence race, and at the DealBook Summit on Dec. 4, its chief executive, Sundar Pichai, snapped back at suggestions that it should be more competitive considering its vast resources.Whereas A.I. startups rely on tech giants for processing power, Google uses its own. The company’s products, like YouTube and Gmail, give it access to mountains of data, and its A.I. researchers have made huge breakthroughs, with two of them winning a Nobel Prize this year. That gives Google an advantage in all three of what Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, earlier in the day called “key inputs” to A.I. progress: compute, data and algorithms.Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, has said that Google should have been the “default winner” in A.I. At the DealBook Summit, Pichai responded, “I would love to do a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft’s own models and our models any day, any time.” Microsoft largely depends on OpenAI for its A.I. models.Pichai also defended his company’s competitiveness. He said that although he thought A.I. progress would slow in the next year (speaking earlier, Altman had a different take), Google’s search engine “will continue to change profoundly in ’25.”He said he expected search to become more, not less, valuable as the web is flooded with content generated by A.I.Pichai also touched on the company’s antitrust lawsuits, the second Trump administration and how artificial intelligence is affecting the way he hires. Here are five highlights from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is the Biden Administration Coming for Chrome?

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      The Justice Department is reportedly targeting Google’s web browser as its antitrust enforcers seek to cement a major win before Donald Trump takes office.Can the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcers succeed in breaking up Google before they leave office?Josh Edelson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA parting antitrust shot by Biden’s enforcersBefore the Biden administration’s antitrust leaders step down, they’re taking their final shots at Big Tech. That will reportedly include an effort to break up Google as a consequence of the Justice Department’s successful competition lawsuit against the company.A forthcoming request to force the sale of the Chrome browser, according to Bloomberg, would be one of the most sweeping competition demands in years. But it will also be a test of the second Trump administration’s own antitrust agenda.Chrome is a crucial part of Google’s business. The industry’s dominant web browser — it controls about 61 percent of the U.S. market, according to Bloomberg — is a potent data-collection portal, steering people to the company’s search engine. That gives Google the ability to track users when they are signed in, and can be used to for targeted ads.Chrome has also become a gateway for Google’s A.I. services, including its Gemini chatbot, which some say could eventually follow user activity across the web.The Justice Department decided against requesting the divestiture of Google’s Android smartphone operating system, Bloomberg reports. But it wants the company to stop bundling it with services including search and the Google Play app store.If successful, the split would cement a crucial legacy for Biden’s antitrust team. It’s unclear how much of the aggressive approach promoted by Lina Khan of the F.T.C. and Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department will survive. A Chrome divestiture would achieve the kind of corporate breakup that regulators failed to force upon Microsoft two decades ago.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Are Tesla’s Future. Experts Have Doubts.

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      Tesla says self-driving taxis will power its growth, but the company hasn’t said when such a service would be ready or how much it would increase profits.As sales of its electric cars have fallen, Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, have sought to convince Wall Street that the company’s future lies not in the grinding business of making and selling cars but in the far more exciting world of artificial intelligence.In Mr. Musk’s telling, one of Tesla’s main A.I.-based businesses will be driverless taxis, or robotaxis, that can operate pretty much anywhere and in any condition. Tesla is very close to perfecting such vehicles and will easily secure regulatory approval to put them on roads, Mr. Musk said last week on a conference call to discuss the company’s second quarter results.Mr. Musk’s vision of autonomous vehicles, or A.V.s, is not limited to cars that drive themselves. He has also claimed that individuals who buy Teslas would be able to make money when they are asleep or at work by letting the company use their cars as robotaxis.The robotaxi service will, Mr. Musk has said, catapult Tesla’s stock market valuation, around $700 billion now, into the trillions of dollars.But first, a lot will have to go right.His idea would require major advances in technology and fundamental changes in the way people view cars. The experience of driverless taxi services like Waymo and Cruise in Phoenix, San Francisco and other cities raises questions about when such offerings will become profitable and how much money they will make.Tesla’s technology will face stiff competition from Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google; ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft; and Amazon’s self-driving business Zoox. Carmakers including General Motors, which owns Cruise, are also pursuing autonomous driving, along with Chinese tech and auto companies like Baidu and BYD.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump’s Latest Indictment May Reshape the 2024 Race

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      The former president, who faces seven criminal charges for mishandling classified documents, is expected to surrender to authorities next week.“I’m an innocent man,” Donald Trump told his supporters on Thursday night.Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTrump indicted: what to expect next For the second time in two months, Donald Trump will surrender to the authorities to face legal charges, dropping another bomb into the 2024 presidential race. Within minutes, he was fund-raising on the back of the news.The indictment hasn’t yet been unsealed, but some details are known. The former president and front-runner for the Republican nomination faces seven criminal charges that he mishandled classified documents from his time in the White House and obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them. He is expected to turn himself in to the authorities on Tuesday.Mr. Trump himself broke the news last night, a sign his inner circle had been bracing for the indictment for weeks.On his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump called the charges “election interference at the highest level,” adding, “I’m an innocent man.” Mr. Trump’s legal troubles keep piling up. But this indictment holds greater “legal gravity and political peril,” writes The Times’s Peter Baker. It’s not just a first in American history for a former president, but also involves the nation’s secrets.Here’s a recap of the other legal matters he faces:A federal grand jury last month ordered Mr. Trump to pay $5 million to the journalist E. Jean Carroll in a civil case that he sexually abused and then defamed her; Carroll’s legal team has sued Mr. Trump again over subsequent comments he made about her.In April, the New York authorities charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business documents in connection with hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.Mr. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for possible election tampering in the state; a decision is expected later this summer.Mr. Trump’s Republican challengers came to his defense. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, his nearest rival in the polls, accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department to take on a political rival. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the anti-woke financier, said he would pardon Mr. Trump if elected president.Mr. Trump gained in the polls the last time he was charged. It is unclear if the public will be so supportive this time. A Yahoo-YouGov poll showed nearly two-thirds of Americans view the charges of removing classified documents and obstructing the investigation as a serious criminal matter; a similar percentage feel that he should not serve as president if convicted.So far, big-money conservative donors have stayed mum on the latest charges. Many have deserted Mr. Trump after backing him in previous election cycles.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The wildfire haze is moving on from the Northeast. Cities including New York and Philadelphia have seen air conditions improve, though the noxious smoke is spreading south and west; the F.A.A. has lifted ground stops at LaGuardia and Newark airports. But scientists confirmed that the El Niño weather phenomenon has started, portending hotter temperatures through next year.China suffers from a lack of inflation. New monthly data shows that producer prices fell 4.6 percent in May, the sharpest year-on-year drop in seven years, while consumer prices rose just 0.2 percent. Though a contrast from Western countries grappling with rapid inflation, the trend suggests China’s faltering economy may soon suffer from deflation.The White House reportedly braces for the death of its student loan forgiveness program. Biden administration officials are privately worrying that the Supreme Court may strike down its proposal, which would eliminate up to $20,000 in education debt per person for millions of Americans, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House is preparing less legally risky alternatives to help borrowers.G.M. electric vehicles will gain access to Tesla’s charging network. The move, which follows a similar announcement by Ford, will vastly expand charger accessibility for G.M. But some in the industry fear that wider adoption of Tesla’s plugs, which are now likely to become the industry standard, will give Elon Musk’s company even greater power over the E.V. market.The bull market rally is already being testedInvestors shrugged off lousy labor market data and a new round of inflation warnings to push the S&P 500 into bull market territory on Thursday. But that enthusiasm seems to be waning on Friday morning as stock futures suggest markets will open lower.The bear market lasted 248 trading days, the longest such run since 1948. Since its October low, the S&P 500 has gained 20.04 percent, just enough to tip into a bull market. The benchmark index is still roughly 10 percent away from a record high; some market observers say, therefore, that it’s premature to call this a true bull market.Investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has underpinned this rally. According to Deutsche Bank analysts, the FANG+ Index — a collection of big cap tech stocks, many of which are expanding into A.I. — is up nearly 80 percent since ChatGPT debuted in November.Now to the bad news … A growing number of economists believe that next week’s Consumer Price Index report will show an uptick in core inflation. That could pressure the Fed to raise interest rates further — if not next week, in July.And there are signs of economic weakness. The Labor Department on Thursday reported 261,000 new jobless claims, the highest number since October 2021.Expect a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. That was the message from Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and president of the E.C.B., in a speech on Thursday at M.I.T.The economist, who once famously vowed to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, has a bearish view of the future. He warned that industrialized economies face a “volatile cocktail” of persistent inflation, high budget deficits, high interest rates and low potential growth as central banks grapple with a climate crisis, the reshoring of supply chains and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.Crypto’s protagonists lay out their casesRegulators and crypto executives are making their cases in the court of public opinion after the S.E.C. sued Binance and Coinbase, two of the sector’s biggest exchanges, this week in an intensifying crackdown on the industry.“We’ve seen this story before,” the S.E.C. chairman Gary Gensler said on Thursday at a fintech conference, likening widespread noncompliance in crypto to the era of “hucksters” and fraud a century ago. He rejected claims that digital asset businesses cannot comply with the existing rules or do not realize that they apply: “When crypto asset market participants go on Twitter or TV and say they lacked ‘fair notice’ that their conduct could be illegal, don’t believe it.”Coinbase’s boss says that new regulations are needed. Its C.E.O., Brian Armstrong, addressed the event on Wednesday, saying the rules are opaque and need to be updated. The S.E.C. case is certainly a drag on his company: Moody’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Coinbase on Thursday to negative from stable because of the charges.Binance is regrouping. The company’s American division said on Thursday that it would no longer allow customers to trade in U.S. dollars, after banks stopped working with it. At the same time, the S.E.C. says it is trying to find “alternative means” to serve legal papers to Binance and Changpeng Zhao, the company’s C.E.O., telling a federal court that it was difficult to determine where he was.Who’s judging? The S.E.C.’s case against Coinbase in New York was assigned to District Judge Jennifer Rearden. Her nomination last year angered some Democratic lawmakers because she represented Chevron as a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She’s also handling the government’s appeal of the sale of the failed crypto broker Voyager to Binance’s U.S. arm and put the deal on hold in March. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court for D.C. is presiding over the Binance case, and is best known for overseeing the criminal proceedings against two Mr. Trump advisers, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Next week, she will hold a hearing on an S.E.C. request to freeze Binance’s assets.“I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases.” — Steven Schwartz, a lawyer who has practiced in New York for 30 years. He told a federal judge that he regrets using the chatbot to write a legal brief that was found to be filled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations.Buzzphrase of the week: “spatial computing” Apple unveiled its first headset for augmented/virtual/mixed reality this week, but none of those words appears in a nine-minute video on its website about the $3,500 Vision Pro goggles. Instead, the company preferred a more obscure term: “spatial computing.”Apple is trying to put its own stamp on the category. When it comes to spatial computing, “no one knows what that is — and that provides Apple the opportunity to define it,” Marcus Collins, the author of “For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do and Who We Want to Be,” told DealBook.Apple has successfully done this in the past. Before the App Store, people didn’t talk about apps; they talked about “software programs.”And the iPhone and AirPods were neither the first mobile phone nor the first earbuds, but they became runaway hits (despite being priced at a premium to the competition). Jim Posner, a communications consultant who has led teams at Twitter and Google, said that the intended audience may be investors and the media rather than consumers. “They are pitching a product to people,” he said. “For the tech press, industry analysts and investors, they’re pitching a concept.”Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg gave his thoughts on Apple’s Vision Pro goggles. “I was really curious to see what they’d ship,” the Meta C.E.O. told employees on Thursday, “and it’s a good sign for our own development that they don’t have any magical solutions to the laws of physics that we haven’t already explored.”THE SPEED READ DealsThe agricultural commodities giant Bunge is said to be finalizing a deal to buy Viterra, a grain trader, that could value the combined firm at $30 billion. (Reuters)UBS has secured a government backstop for losses tied to its takeover of Credit Suisse, clearing the last hurdle for combining Switzerland’s top two banks. (FT)Permira is reportedly weighing a sale or public listing for Golden Goose, a footwear brand favored by Taylor Swift, at a $2.7 billion valuation. (Bloomberg)PolicyLouisiana passed a bill that would block online services — including Instagram, TikTok and Fortnite — for children under 18 without their parents’ permission. (NYT)The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a dog-toy maker whose product closely resembles a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. (NYT)Best of the restSam Altman of OpenAI, Bob Iger of Disney, Jay Monahan of the PGA Tour, Rupert Murdoch of Fox and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet are all on the guest list for this year’s Allen & Company gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Variety)How Taylor Swift is a godsend for Chicago’s hotel industry. (Bloomberg)“What All the Single Ladies (and Men) Say About the Economy” (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Big Tech and the Fed

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      Some tech companies’ earnings are flagging, in what could be a positive sign for the Federal Reserve.Still big.Noah Berger/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat tech earnings say about the economy The long-booming bottom lines of major tech companies are all of a sudden smaller than expected. That might be a good thing. Big Tech sailed through the pandemic with its profits mostly intact. The fact that some firms’ results are now flagging could be a positive sign for the Federal Reserve, which is trying to engineer a slowdown as it fights the nation’s worst bout of inflation in four decades.The big question for investors, and perhaps the Fed, is whether the profits of Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and the other tech giants, along with corporate America in general, have fallen enough.Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, kicked off what appears to be a disappointing round of quarterly reports for the U.S.’s largest tech companies yesterday. Meta will release its results this afternoon, with Apple and Amazon rounding out Big Tech’s earnings announcements tomorrow.Microsoft’s profits, while below expectations, were still up. Sales of its signature software products, like Office, rose 13 percent. Its cloud services were up 40 percent. And LinkedIn, the professional social network Microsoft bought in 2016, grew 26 percent from a year ago, continuing to benefit from the tightest job market in decades.Alphabet’s sales rose 13 percent. In another good sign for the economy, the jump was driven by better-than-expected sales in its core Google search engine business, while results were mixed elsewhere. A jump in expenses and an exit from its Russian-related businesses caused profits to slump 14 percent.The results were positive enough for investors. Alphabet’s shares rose nearly 5 percent on the earnings news to $110. Microsoft’s shares jumped $10, or nearly 4 percent, to $262. Executives at both companies said they saw evidence of a weaker economy. “We are not immune to what is happening in the macro broadly,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said on a call with analysts. Alphabet’s chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, told analysts that a pullback in spending by some advertisers reflected “uncertainty about a number of factors.”Few are betting that the earnings reports will change the Fed’s approach. Its policymakers are meeting this week, and they are widely expected to continue raising benchmark interest rates. While central bankers “will likely acknowledge a recent weakening in economic momentum, the Fed will likely feel the need to appear resolute in battling inflation until there are clear signs that it is abating,” wrote David Kelly, the chief global strategist of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, in a note to clients earlier this week.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Kraken, the crypto exchange, is under investigation for possible sanctions violations. The Treasury Department is looking into whether Kraken illegally allowed users in Iran and elsewhere to buy and sell digital tokens. Shares of Coinbase, a larger crypto exchange, plunged yesterday after reports that the S.E.C. was investigating whether it allowed trading in unregistered securities. Cathie Wood’s Ark funds reportedly dumped Coinbase shares yesterday for the first time this year.Antitrust legislation aimed at Big Tech may be off the table for now. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, told donors at a Capitol Hill fund-raiser yesterday that the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which he had promised to bring to a vote this summer, lacks the support needed to get it to the Senate floor, Bloomberg reported. The bill’s bipartisan backers have been pressuring Schumer to act fast, before midterm elections that could change the balance of power in Congress.One America News, once a dependable Trump promoter, is struggling to survive. The network is being dropped by major carriers and faces a wave of defamation lawsuits for its outlandish stories about the 2020 election. OAN’s most recent blow is from Verizon, which will stop carrying the network on its Fios television service this week. It is now available to only a few thousand people who subscribe to regional cable providers.Teva Pharmaceuticals reaches a tentative $4.25 billion settlement over opioids. The proposed settlement, which is with some 2,500 local governments, states and tribes, would end thousands of lawsuits against one of the largest producers of the painkillers during the height of the opioid epidemic.Florida’s largest utility secretly funded a website that attacked its critics. Florida Power & Light bankrolled and controlled The Capitolist, a news site aimed at Florida lawmakers, through intermediaries from an Alabama consulting firm, an investigation by The Miami Herald found. The site claimed to be independent, but it advocated rate hikes and legislative favors in efforts that were directed by top executives at the utility.BlackRock downshifts on E.S.G. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, slashed its support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues this year, backing only 24 percent of such resolutions in the proxy season that ended in June, down from 43 percent in the previous period. The firm, which has long led the conscious investing movement, said this year’s proposals were “less supportable” and cited new regulatory guidance that opened the door to a broader range of policy-related proposals.The firm has criticized overly “prescriptive” resolutions. In a May memo, BlackRock signaled that Russia’s war in Ukraine was straining global energy supplies and shifting its calculations. “Many climate-related shareholder proposals sought to dictate the pace of companies’ energy transition plans despite continued consumer demand,” wrote the firm’s global head of investment stewardship, Sandy Boss. She noted that shareholders generally supported fewer environmental and social proposals this year as well, voting for 27 percent of resolutions, down from 36 percent in the previous proxy period.Opposition to E.S.G. is mounting. The environmental, social and governance investment push has been labeled “woke capitalism” by critics and is under fire from executives like Tesla’s Elon Musk, major investors like Bill Ackman and Republican politicians. In a speech yesterday, former Vice President Mike Pence, a possible 2024 hopeful, said that big government and big business were together advancing a “pernicious woke agenda.”E.S.G. supporters say critics may have a point. Andrew Behar, C.E.O. of the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, agrees that many supposed E.S.G. investments don’t reflect true sustainability — with ever more capital directed toward the idea and many funds failing to live up to their promises. Behar argued that more corporate disclosures — which anti-E.S.G. groups oppose — would help to ensure that green investing actually works. He argues that critics also ignore a key financial incentive driving investor interest: knowing and lowering the costs of environmental issues throughout company operations, including risks from changing weather and the transition to more sustainable models. “We don’t have an E.S.G. problem,” Behar told DealBook. “We have a naming problem.”“I quit Starbucks. I had to. I just didn’t feel like that was justifiable. It’s like a small car payment.” — Fontaine Weyman, a 43-year-old songwriter from Charleston, S.C., on changing her coffee habits. Many Americans are dealing with the fastest inflation of their adult lives across a broad range of goods and services.Instagram tries to explain itself Instagram responded yesterday to criticism from some of its most popular users, including Kylie Jenner, about new features that made it more like its top rival, TikTok, the fast-growing video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s head, said that it was experimenting with several changes, and that he knew users were unhappy. “It’s not yet good,” he said of some of the tweaks in a video post. He stressed Instagram’s commitment to photos, the app’s original focus, but said, “I’m going to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.”Reels, a short-video product, is one of the six main investment priorities at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, according to an internal memo last month from Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer. Cox said that users had doubled the amount of time they spent on Reels year over year, and that Meta would prioritize boosting ads in Reels “as quickly as possible.” Last week, Instagram announced that almost all videos in the app would be posted as Reels.The changes come as Meta heads into a new phase. Mark Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive, has cut costs, reshuffled his leadership team and made clear that low-performing employees will be let go, writes The Times’s Mike Isaac. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said on a call late last month. In recent months, profit at Meta has fallen and revenue has slowed as the company has spent lavishly on augmented and virtual reality projects, and as the economic slowdown has hurt its advertising business.The high-profile complaints about Instagram’s revamp started in recent days, when Kylie Jenner, the beauty mogul with 361 million Instagram followers, shared an image on the site that read: “Make Instagram Instagram again. (stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends.) Sincerely, everyone.”“PRETTY PLEASE,” Kim Kardashian, Jenner’s half sister and the seventh-most-followed Instagram user, echoed in a later post. Yesterday, Chrissy Teigen, a model and author with 39 million followers, responded to Mosseri in a tweet, saying, “we don’t wanna make videos Adam lol.”Companies have reason to listen when social media stars speak up, writes The Times’s Kalley Huang. In 2018, after Snapchat overhauled its interface, Jenner tweeted: “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me….” Within a week, Snap, the app’s parent company, had lost $1.3 billion in market value.THE SPEED READ DealsThe activist investor Elliott Management reportedly has a stake in Paypal and is pushing it to cut costs faster. (WSJ, Bloomberg)Twitter shareholders will be asked to vote on Elon Musk’s potential acquisition in September. (Bloomberg)PolicyThe Senate advanced an industrial policy bill that includes more than $52 billion in subsidies for chip makers building U.S. plants. (NYT)The short seller Carson Block is being sued over a $14 million award from the S.E.C. that raised questions about the agency’s whistle-blower program. (Bloomberg)After Apple launched a “buy now, pay later” service, the top U.S. consumer finance regulator warned Big Tech about undermining competition in the sector. (FT)A federal judge ruled that Uber doesn’t have to offer wheelchair-accessible cars in every city. (The Verge)Best of the restCredit Suisse, which reported larger second-quarter losses than expected, replaced its C.E.O. (FT)Customers are paying billions of dollars in fees for “free” checking. (Bloomberg)The default settings in Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft products that you should turn off right away. (NYT)This man sells mud to Major League Baseball. (NYT)“The Case of the $5,000 Springsteen Tickets” (NYT)R.I.P., Choco Taco. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Barack Obama’s New Role: Fighting Disinformation

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      The former president has embarked on a campaign to warn that the scourge of online falsehoods has eroded the foundations of democracy.SAN FRANCISCO — In 2011, President Barack Obama swept into Silicon Valley and yukked it up with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder. The occasion was a town hall with the social network’s employees that covered the burning issues of the day: taxes, health care, the promise of technology to solve the nation’s problems.More than a decade later, Mr. Obama is making another trip to Silicon Valley, this time with a grimmer message about the threat that the tech giants have created to the nation itself.In private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad.In a speech at Stanford University on Thursday, he is expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.The urgency of the crisis — the internet’s “demand for crazy,” as he put it recently — has already pushed him further than he was ever prepared to go as president to take on social media.“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money but say to them that there’s certain practices you engage in that we don’t think are good for society,” Mr. Obama, now 61, said at a conference on disinformation this month organized by the University of Chicago and The Atlantic.Mr. Obama’s campaign — the timing of which stemmed not from a single cause, people close to him said, but a broad concern about the damage to democracy’s foundations — comes in the middle of a fierce but inconclusive debate over how best to restore trust online.In Washington, lawmakers are so sharply divided that any legislative compromise seems out of reach. Democrats criticize giants like Facebook, which has been renamed Meta, and Twitter for failing to rid their sites of harmful content. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., too, has lashed out at the platforms that allowed falsehoods about coronavirus vaccines to spread, saying last year that “they’re killing people.”Republicans, for their part, accuse the companies of suppressing free speech by censoring conservative voices — above all former President Donald J. Trump, who was barred from Facebook and Twitter after the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 last year. With so little agreement about the problem, there is even less about a solution.Whether Mr. Obama’s advocacy can sway the debate remains to be seen. While he has not sought to endorse a single solution or particular piece of legislation, he nonetheless hopes to appeal across the political spectrum for common ground.“You’ve got to think about how things are going to be consumed through different partisan filtering but still make your true, authentic, best case about how you see the world and what the stakes are and why,” said Jason Goldman, a former Twitter, Blogger and Medium executive who served as the White House’s first chief digital officer under Mr. Obama and continues to advise him.“There’s a potential reason to believe that a good path exists out of some of the messes that we’re in,” he added.As an apostle of the dangers of disinformation, Mr. Obama might be an imperfect messenger. He was the first presidential candidate to ride the power of social media into office in 2008 but then, as president, did little to intervene when its darker side — propagating falsehoods, extremism, racism and violence — became apparent at home and abroad.“I saw it sort of unfold — and that is the degree to which information, disinformation, misinformation was being weaponized,” Mr. Obama said in Chicago, expressing something close to regret. He added, “I think I underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to it as they were, including ours.”Mr. Obama, those close to him said, became fixated by disinformation after leaving office. He rehashed, as many others have, whether he had done enough to counter the information campaign ordered by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to tilt the 2016 election against Hillary Rodham Clinton.He began meeting with executives, activists and other experts in earnest last year after Mr. Trump refused to recognize the results of the 2020 election, making unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, those who have consulted with Mr. Obama said.In his musings on the matter, Mr. Obama has not claimed to have discovered a silver bullet that has eluded others who have studied the issue. By coming forward more publicly, however, he hopes to highlight the values for corporate conduct around which consensus could form.“This can be an effective nudge to a lot of the thinking that is already taking place,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, said. “Every day brings more proof of why this matters.”The location of Thursday’s speech, Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, was intentional, bringing Mr. Obama to the heart of the industry that in many ways shaped his presidency.In his 2008 presidential campaign, he went from being an underdog candidate to an online sensation with his embrace of social media as a tool to target voters and to solicit donations. He became an industry favorite; his digital campaign was led by a Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, and several other tech chief executives endorsed him, including Eric Schmidt of Google.During his administration, Mr. Obama extolled the promise of tech companies to strengthen the economy with higher-skilled jobs and to propel democracy movements abroad. He lured tech employees like Mr. Goldman to join his administration and filled his campaign coffers with fund-raisers at the Bay Area homes of supporters like Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Meta, and Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.It was a period of mutual admiration and little government oversight of the tech industry. Though Mr. Obama endorsed privacy regulations, not a single piece of legislation to control the tech companies passed during his tenure, even as they became economic behemoths that touch virtually every aspect of life.Looking back at his administration’s approach, Mr. Obama has said he would not pinpoint any one action or piece of legislation that he might have handled differently. In hindsight, though, he understands now how optimism about online technologies, including social media, outweighed caution, according to Mr. Rhodes.“He’ll certainly acknowledge that there’s things that could have been done differently or ways we were all thinking about the tools and technologies that turned out at times to see the opportunities more than the risks,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s views began to change with Russia’s flood of propaganda on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stir confusion and chaos in the 2016 presidential election. Days after that election, Mr. Obama took Mr. Zuckerberg aside at a meeting of world leaders in Lima, Peru, to warn that he needed to take the problem more seriously.Once he left office, Mr. Obama was noticeably absent for much of the public conversation around disinformation.“As a general matter, there was an awareness that anything he said about certain issues was just going to ricochet around the fun house mirrors,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Obama’s approach to the issue has been characteristically deliberative. He has consulted the chief executives of Apple, Alphabet and others. Through the Obama Foundation in Chicago, he has also met often with the scholars the foundation has trained; they recounted their own experiences with disinformation in a variety of fields around the world.From those deliberations, potential solutions have begun taking shape, a theme he plans to outline broadly on Thursday. While Mr. Obama maintains that he remains “close to a First Amendment absolutist,” he has focused on the need for greater transparency and regulatory oversight of online discourse — and the ways companies have profited from manipulating audiences through their proprietary algorithms.Mr. Goldman compared a potential approach to consumer protection or food safety practices already in place.“You may not know exactly what’s in a hot dog, but you trust that there is a process for meat inspections that ensures that the food sold and consumed in this country and other countries around the world are safe,” he said.In Congress, lawmakers have already proposed the creation of a regulatory agency dedicated to overseeing internet companies. Others have proposed stripping tech companies of a legal shield that protects them from liability.No proposals have advanced, though, even as the European Union has moved forward, putting into law some of the practices still merely bandied about in Washington. The union is expected to move as soon as Friday on new regulations to impose audits of algorithmic amplification.Kyle Plotkin, a Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, said Mr. Obama “can be a polarizing figure” and could inflame, not calm, the debate over disinformation.“Adoring fans will be very happy with him weighing in, but others won’t,” he said. “I don’t think he will move the ball forward. If anything, he moves the ball backward.” More

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      ‘La French Tech’ Arrives Under Macron, but Proves No Panacea

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      The president has brought innovation, jobs and growth. Still, resentments fester on the eve of the presidential election.PARIS — In full Steve Jobs mode, President Emmanuel Macron of France donned a black turtleneck in January and took to Twitter to celebrate the creation in France of 25 “unicorn” start-ups — companies with a market value of over 1 billion euros, or almost $1.1 billion.He declared that France’s start-up economy was “changing the lives of French people” and “strengthening our sovereignty.” It was also helping to create jobs: Unemployment has fallen to 7.4 percent, the lowest level in a decade.The start-up boom was a milestone for a young president elected five years ago as a restless disrupter, promising to pry open the economy and make it competitive in the 21st century.To some extent, Mr. Macron has succeeded, luring billions of euros in foreign investments and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country whose resistance to change is stubborn. But disruption is just that, and the president has at the same time left many French feeling unsettled and unhappy, left behind or ignored.As Mr. Macron seeks re-election starting on Sunday, it is two countries that will vote — a mainly urban France that sees the need for change to meet the era’s sweeping technological and economic challenges, and a France of the “periphery,” wary of innovation, struggling to get by, alarmed by immigration and resentful of a leader seen as embodying the arrogance of the privileged.Which France shows up at voting booths in greater numbers will determine the outcome.Campaign posters on display this month in the northeastern French town of Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn many Western societies, the simultaneous spread of technology and inequality has posed acute problems, stirring social tensions, and France has proved no exception. If the disenchanted France prevails, Marine Le Pen, the perennial candidate of the nationalist right, will most likely prevail, too.Worried that he may have lost the left by favoring start-up entrepreneurship and market reforms, Mr. Macron has in the past week been multiplying appeals to the left, resorting to phrases like “our lives are worth more than their profits” to suggest his perceived rightward lurch was not the whole story.He told France Inter radio that “fraternity” was the most important word in the French national motto, and said during a visit to Brittany that “solidarity” and “equality of opportunity” would be the central themes of an eventual second term.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On the Scene: A Times reporter attended a rally held by Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate. Here is what he saw.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in President Emmanuel Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.A Late Surge: After recently rising in voter surveys, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could become the first left-wing candidate since 2012 to reach the second round of the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.The pledges looked like signs of growing anxiety about the election’s outcome. After several months in which Mr. Macron’s re-election had appeared virtually assured, the gap between him and Ms. Le Pen has closed. The leading two candidates in Sunday’s vote will go through to a runoff on April 24.The election will be largely decided by perceptions of the economy. In Mr. Macron’s favor, the country has bounced back faster than expected from coronavirus lockdowns, with economic growth reaching 7 percent after a devastating pandemic-induced recession.Marine Le Pen speaking this month in Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe most significant cultural transformation has come in the area of tech, where Mr. Macron’s determination to create a start-up culture centered around new technology has brought changes the government considers essential to the future of France.Cédric O, the secretary of state for the digital sector, wearing jeans and a white dress shirt, no tie, admits to being obsessed. Day after long day, he plots the future of “la French tech” from his spacious office at the Finance Ministry.Five years ago, that may have seemed quixotic, but something has stirred. “It’s vital to be obsessed because the risk France and Europe are facing is to be kicked out of history,” Mr. O, 39, said, borrowing a line often used by Mr. Macron. “We have to get back into the international technological race.”Toward that end, Mr. Macron opened Station F, a mammoth incubator project in Paris representing France’s start-up ambitions, and earmarked nearly €10 billion in tax credits and other inducements to lure research activity and artificial intelligence business. A new bank was created to help finance start-ups.The president wined and dined multinational chief executives, creating an annual gathering at Versailles called “Choose France.”Since 2019, France has become the leading destination for foreign investment in Europe, and more than 70 investment projects worth €12 billion have been pledged by foreign multinationals at the Versailles gatherings, said Franck Riester, France’s foreign trade minister.In the past four years, IBM, SAP of Germany and DeepMind, the London-based machine learning company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, have increased investment in France and created thousands of jobs.Station F, a mammoth project in Paris that represents France’s start-up ambitions.Roberto Frankenberg for The New York TimesFacebook and Google have also bolstered their French presence and their artificial intelligence teams in Paris. Salesforce, the American cloud computing company, is moving ahead with over €2 billion in pledged investments.“Macron brought a culture shift where France was suddenly open to the world of funders,” said Thomas Clozel, a doctor by training and the founder in 2016 of Owkin, a start-up that uses Artificial Intelligence to personalize and improve medical treatment. “He made everything easy for start-up entrepreneurs and so changed the view of France as an anticapitalist society.”François Hollande, Mr. Macron’s Socialist Party predecessor, had famously declared in 2012: “My enemy is the world of finance.” As a result, Mr. Clozel said, securing funds as a French start-up was so problematic that he chose to incorporate in the United States.No longer.“Today, I am thinking of reincorporating in France,” he said. “The ease of dealing with the government, the consortium of start-ups helping one another, and the new French tech pride are compelling.”Among the start-ups that have had a significant effect on French life are Doctolib, a website that allows patients to arrange for medical appointments and tests online, and Backmarket, an online market for reconditioned tech gadgets that just became France’s most valuable start-up, at $5.7 billion.They began life before Mr. Macron took office, but have grown exponentially in the past five years.“I have made 56 investments in the last two years, and 53 of them are in France,” said Jonathan Benhamou, a French entrepreneur who founded PeopleDoc, a company that simplifies access to information for human resources departments.Now funding new ventures and focusing on a new start-up called Resilience in the field of personalized cancer care, Mr. Benhamou credits Mr. Macron with “giving investors confidence in stability and creating a virtuous cycle.”Talented engineers no longer go elsewhere because there is an “ecosystem” for them in France, Mr. O said.Yellow Vest protesters blocking a road in Caen, in France’s Normandy region, in November 2018.Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Macron has insisted that opening the economy is consistent with maintaining protections for French workers and that the arrival of la French tech does not mean the embrace of the no-holds-barred capitalism behind the churn of American creativity.Despite the president’s overhauls, France remains one of the most expensive countries for payroll taxes, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with hourly labor costs of nearly €38, close to levels seen in Sweden, Norway and other northern European countries.“We know that we have to go further,” Mr. Riester, the foreign trade minister, said in a recent interview. “We still have some brakes that could be taken off the economy, and we have to cut some red tape in the future.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. 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